If there was one UK-based studio whose name was synonymous with quality during the life of the original PlayStation, it is Psygnosis. Working primarily as a publisher on 16 bit platforms like the Amiga, they helped Reflections Interactive and DMA design get their first big breaks, with the Shadow of the Beast and Lemmings series respectively. Those two codeshops would go on to give the world Grand Theft Auto (as Rockstar) and Driver (as Reflections). In fact, just about anyone who’s anyone in British gaming worked with the Liverpool based studio in the 1990s.

It was little surprise then when in 1993 a nascent Sony Computer Entertainment, looking to build an in-house development team for its soon to be released PlayStation snapped up Psygnosis and set them hard to work bringing groundbreaking new titles to the platform. Over the next few years the studio’s output was both prodigious and of a consistently high quality. They teams up again with Reflections for the European launch title Destruction Derby and it’s vastly superior sequel, and internally developed the acclaimed Colony Wars and G-Police franchises. The pinnacle of their success, though, was a series that became intrinsically linked with the format, and is seen by many as being instrumental in pushing both the PlayStation and gaming as a whole into the adult market.

Wipeout wasn’t a massively original concept. As a futuristic racer the SNES’s F-Zero predated it by some five years. Neither was the idea of a weapons-based racer particular new either. What was groundbreaking was the game’s aesthetic. With cover art and game elements designed by bleeding edge graphic design house the Designers Republic and a soundtrack littered with the kind of underground club culture chic that would put most Ministry of Sound compilations to shame, Wipeout hit the mid nineties zeitgeist perfectly. As a result it inspired many clones, almost none of which could come close to matching its success. While Powerdrome, Extreme G, MegaRace and the like are now forgotten and thankfully consigned to the dusty bin of never downloaded ISOs on completist emulation websites, there was one series that came close to surpassing the brilliance of Wipeout as a futuristic shoot-’em-up racer.

Appropriately enough Rollcage was another Psygnosis title. Developed by little-known and now defunct British codeshop Attention to Detail it bears all the hallmarks of being as close to an unofficial Wipeout spin off as was ever produced. Mean and moody near-future setting? Check. Twisty-turny, improbable roller coaster tracks? Check. Similar, but subtly different, futuristic racers with superficial avatars? Check. Impressive physics? Check. Shiny weapons trailed by streaks of blue light? Check. Trendy club-inspired soundtrack? Check. It’s all there. If it weren’t for two crucial differences in the core game mechanic this could literally have been Wipeout 3 (the real Wipeout 3 was released just a few months after Rollcage).

So for all its similarities, where does Rollcage differ? Well gone are the pointy headed hover ships of the better-known series and their slightly floaty handling. Instead you and your competitors hoon around the insane tracks in cars with ludicrously oversized off-road tyres. In fact the tyres are so big that the cars can flip over and run upside down, much like those radio controlled cars you can find in toyshops. The game, and it’s physics model, made full use of that fact, letting racers career up the side of massive banked curves to flip over other competitors, and even placing weapons and speed up pads on the roofs of tunnels, encouraging upside-down mayhem that traded a power-up boost for momentary disorientation.

Perhaps more subtly, but (in later races especially) more effectively, the games weapons could also be deployed in a fairly original manner. The usual array of missiles, shields and boosts were on offer, but as well as targeting individual racers, each could be fired at trackside buildings and other structures, bringing them crashing down ahead, or ideally on top, of other racers. It was a great technique and meant each lap was made different by the every changing, and easily destructable scenery. As a technique it’s still being used today in action racers like Split/Second and Motorstorm Apocolypse.

Released in 1999, at the end of the PlayStation’s golden era and just while the gaming world was busily salivating over the soon to be released PlayStation 2, Rollcage was warmly received by critics and gamers, but is now largely ignored in retrospective lists on the format’s best titles. That’s perhaps unfair, as today, it still plays well, and offers just as many easily accessible thrills as Wipeout. In fact the core concept holds up so well, that it’s a wonder it, like its venerable stable-mate, isn’t still being churned out in a variety of next generation iterations. With modern graphics and a more advanced physics model, Rollcage’s uniquely chaotic racing and breakneck turn of speed could be just the thing for modern gamers.

Sadly most of what was Psygnosis in its heyday has now been shut down or merged. The name itself was killed off by Sony with the launch of the PS2, becoming instead SCE Studio Liverpool. It still exists, and is still turning out Wipeout sequels for current and next-gen Sony hardware, but it’s a shadow of its former-self, a sign of the changing landscape of game development that leaves little room for inventive IP. Indeed it’s telling that one of the closest modern equivalents to Rollcage, Blur, sold in such low numbers, despite widespread critical acclaim, that it sealed the closure of Bizarre Creations, another renowned Liverpool-based codeshop that got its first break developing for Psygnosis.

For UK-based fans of all things four-wheeled, or mere mortals looking to buy a used car, Auto Trader, both in its original paper and newer internet incarnation is a lifesaver. Far and away the best place to find ads for used motors, with lots of detail, and decent pictures, the digital versions of Auto Trader have great content, but have never been that easy to use.

For years the site was clunky, slow and prone to random crashes. Then a couple of years ago the firm launched an iPhone app, which promised the earth (including number plate recognition which would verify a car’s indentity and provide performance stats on the model in question) but delivered very little. It was one of most error and crash prone apps I’ve ever used, and garnered both terrible reviews, and fairly rapid uninstallation from just about everyone who tried it.

Now though things are better. The iPhone app is stable, and does what you’d expect it to. It searches the Auto Trader database and displays result. No ridiculous bells or whistles, and thankfully no crashes. It’s now been joined by a proper iPad app, which thankfully is, like it’s smaller cousin, totally free. Fare from being buggy like the first iPhone app, or merely competent like the current iteration, this is one of the best site to app transfers I have ever seen.

The interface is a joy to use, offering quick access to all the usual Auto Trader variables (price, location, model, engine size, mileage etc) from the off. Cleverly the site also shows, in brackets, how many search results your parameters will yield at each stage of the process, so you can quickly see if there are no vehicles in your price range, or if your parameters are too wide and likely to give you thousands of hits.

Once you do hit search you’re treated to a tiled display of lovely full colour pics of your car. You can choose the size of the tiles, with a comfortable range between relatively tidy, and almost screen-fillingly massive. There’s also a slider along the bottom of the screen that shows your current sort method. If, for example, it’s price, you can scroll up or down through the cars by cost, even moving outside the parameters of your original search to see cars that are, say, a bit more or less expensive. You can also easily switch the search order to another parameter, like distance.

Tap a a result and, like the eBay app, a large window quickly pops up with details, a large swipeable slideshow of pictures and links to maps, websites and the like. It all works smoothly and reliably, and makes browsing for cars a joy. The real genius though is the Garage feature. Much like a favourites option, you can save cars into your garage when you find them. At any time you can then switch to view your garage and see the entries for each car. Cleverly though the garage screen allows you to select up to five cars simultaneously. You’re then presented with tabbed stats on each so you can quickly compare insurance cost, economy, performance and other vital details side by side. It makes it brilliantly easy to see which cars do and don’t meet your needs, or in my case help persuade my girlfriend that a BMW 3 series coupe makes as much financial sense as a diesel golf (that took a little creative accountant).

In fact, like eBay, the Auto Trader app is so brilliantly designed that it’s far more of a pleasure to use that the web-based version. If you’re in the market for a used car and live in the UK, or if you just love browsing the market, I really can’t recommend the Auto Trader app highly enough, especially as it won’t cost you anything at all.

With the Nintendo 3DS in crisis and the PlayStation Vita risking stillbirth, is the era of the handheld console over?

So in the past week we’ve learned two important things about the state of the gaming market. As I predicted, the Nintendo 3DS in big trouble. With it’s price cut by a staggering 32% just months after launch, and Nintendo beginning to switch the focus of it’s PR machine away from the much-criticised glasses-free 3D, the 3DS is beginning to look like the company’s biggest mistake since the Virtual Boy – a console so notorious that it’s now legally mandatory that it be referred to as “ill-fated” at least once in every piece of text that mentions it.

We’ve also learned, or at least, think that we’ve learned, roughly when the ridiculously-named PlayStation Vita will be launched. A dodgy press release and a UK Blockbuster flyer have both hinted at a late October launch in Europe, with the flyer suggesting a price point of around £250. If that’s true then the Vita may suffer the same fate as the 3DS (and to a certain extent it’s own predecessor, the PSP, at least in Europe).

At best, a machine of that price and technological fragility is likely to be a niche product at best. Think of the two best-selling portable gaming devices of all time, the Gameboy and the DS. Both were relatively inexpensive, featured limited technology that forced developers to create innovative gaming experiences that appealed beyond the polygon-obsessed hardcore gaming crowd into a casual marketplace that craved easily graspable concepts. Is that really likely on the Vita? Or will we see a stream of big budget, triple-A conversions of console franchises like Gran Turismo, Gears of War and their ilk? In fact, just who is Sony’s target consumer?

The Vita. Stupid name, flawed concept?

£250 is too much for most under-16s to drop on a second console (after all, the Vita is likely to appeal to the gaming fanboys who will already have shelled out, or convinced their parents to buy, a PS3 or 360). It’s not exactly an impulse buy for the typical 20-30 year old either (the traditional fanbase of PlayStation-branded products), but that’s not the main reason the older gaming demographic will likely stay away. The simple fact is that there is no compelling reason for them to invest. I don’t have the stats to hand, but I would imagine that in the venn diagram of 20-30 year olds, the circles representing PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360 owners with £250 of disposable income to spend on gaming overlaps pretty neatly with that representing owners of Android or Apple smartphones.

For many users both of those platforms have not only replaced their old dumbphones, they have also usurped the portable MP3 player (witness the big drop off in iPod sales since 2008) and the dedicated gaming handheld. There are only so many things we’re willing to carry, especially us men with out storage capacity limited to a couple of pockets. Mobile, keys, wallet. That’s as much we we need, so it’s all we take. If I was given a Vita I’m convinced I’d hardly ever take it out of the house, and much like my PSP before, it would stay in a drawer next to my bed for most of its life.

The original Gameboy. Cheap and robust. Two features the Vita will lack (image by farnea)

The DS was different. It was plasticky, relatively cheap and folded neatly into a form that was protected and easy enough to slip into a pocket. It also predated the iPhone and it’s Android cousins so never had to compete for pocket-space with a device that did pretty much the same job. The GameBoy meanwhile may not have been truly pocketable, but it was dirt cheap and robustly built, and found a home rattling around in the schoolbag of just about every 8-15 year old in the early nineties. It’s worth noting that the main rivals to those machines, the PSP in the case of the DS, and the Sega Game Gear and Atari Lynx in the case of the Gameboy, failed despite boasting far superior technology. Each was let down by two crucial problems – cost and robustness. All were more expensive that Nintendo’s rival products, and all were prone to losing vital bits of expensive kit if they were rammed in a pocket or bag. Just look at the number of PSPs with cracked screens or missing analogue nubs on eBay to see how fragile Sony’s beautiful black console is.

Handhelds mean portability, and portability means risk. As every iPhone 4 owner knows, beauty comes at a price. Apple was rightly kicked for building a gorgeous machine with two major design flaws. The much maligned reception problem caused by that pretty metal band and the perhaps far greater risk of damage caused by covering the damn thing almost entirely in glass and giving it the ergonomic properties of a bar of soap. Ask yourself how many iPhone 4 owners you know who don’t use a cover or case of some form? Then ask why they do that. It’s because they know their phone is both valuable and relatively fragile, but they still want to take it into an environment where it will be knocked, dropped, scraped against keys, rained on and generally abused.

The DS - a Gameboy for a new generation and just as successful (image by Michell Zappa)

Fortunately for Apple, the iPhone can take a case and still fit neatly into the pocket. The PSP never could. That meant that owners were left with a choice. They could keep their device small enough to be portable, but risk it breaking by taking it out of the house into the cruel testing lab of the outside world. Or they could protect it with hard cases and impact resistant sheaths, but in the process make it so cumbersome that it could barely be classed as portable any more. The problem could have been mitigated if, like the Gameboy, the PSP was cheap, knockabout kit bought for under a hundred quid that could be easily replaced if dropped. But it wasn’t That’s why you never see anyone on the tube with a PSP. The DS on the other hand was smaller, came with it’s own case (by folding up neatly) and was far more robust. It also felt cheaper, and often was, helping breed confidence in its owners to actually, you know, use it in the real world.

I fear the same problem will befall the Vita. It’s a beautiful piece of kit with some stunning technology, that Sony claims is akin to holding a PlayStation 3 in your hands. Thing is, if I already have a PS3 in my home, and my Vita is too expensive and fragile to ever leave that home, then what I effectively end up with is two home consoles. One that plugs in to my TV, and one that I can take to the bathroom when nature calls. That’s all well and good (and seems to be the key design conceit behind the Wii U – a console which should perhaps be named Wii While U Wee) but not really worth the extra £250 layout. It’s definitely not worth paying the premium for an expensive, fragile, barely portable device that isn’t that much better than the iPhone that already dominates my limited pocket space.

The first PSP, as fragile as a Faberge egg made of butterfly wings (image by Collin Grady)

The same has, until now, been true for the 3DS. It was too expensive to risk out and about, and other than the 3D gubbins, didn’t offer much beyond smartphone gaming. By marketing it as a technological tour de force Nintendo also managed to increase its perceived value, further loading that risk vs portability equation in favour of that bedside drawer scenario I outlined earlier. There is also the side issue of the price of games on Nintendo’s console versus Apple’s app store. If a typical 3DS title is £30 (which it is in the UK) that doesn’t stack up too well against the 69p gaming on offer from Cupertino.

That’s why Nintendo’s new direction represents a vital last roll of the dice for the company that often seems to understand the market better than anyone. The 3DS never has been a technical tour de force (and with the Vita coming sooner that we thought, will look even less so before 2011 is done). The 3D is gimmicky at best, annoying at worst, and while £200-plus may represent only a small profit for Nintendo, it feels like a lot. Many don’t buy because they don’t see it as good value, those who do barely use the machine because it’s too susceptible to risk in a pocket. That’s why a price cut and de-emphasis on the 3D side of the marketing make sense. It’s also why Nintendo is right if, as reported, they start to emphasise the console’s own downloadable game content (something Sony did yonks ago with the PSPGo). Handheld gamers are used to paying pennies to get instant access to games, not forking over three tenners in a shop for a cartridge. That feels very nineties.

In truth it may be that the handheld market is dead already. Nintendo investors and Sony board members may speak breathlessly of multi-million unit sales projections, pointing to the PSP’s success in Japan (entirely fuelled, it seems, by Monster Hunter) and the last-gen DS’s global dominance. But the market has shifted, consumers already have a handheld gaming device in their pocket and with a pay squeezes and austerity measures all over the westwern world aren’t too down with the whole conspicuous consumption thing. It remains to be seen whether Nintendo’s return to its low cost routes, or Sony’s stubborn insistence on the high-tech, high-price route will win out, but I’m betting both companies will be left effectively fighting for scraps.

Giz-China has photos of a rather swish looking Chinese iPhone clone that’s rumoured to be based on the next gen model widely tipped for an autumn 2011 reveal. People familiar with such things say its not unusual for chinese counterfeiters to get their hands on prototype or pre-production models and have crappy, but authentic-looking knock-offs on sale even before the new product hits the market. Certainly this, 7mm thin beauty looks plausibly like a new Apple product, and the curved edges tally with the majority of iPhone 5 (or 4S, whatever Cupetrino decide to call it) rumours and leaked case designs.

Be assured though, unlike this £80 fake the next iPhone won’t have a Java-based OS. I hope.

Picture courtesy of Giz-China

Filed under: Tech]]>https://tgigreeny.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/tech-iphone-5-clone-hints-at-real-design/feed/0iphone-5-clone1tgigreenyiphone-5-knock-off[Retro] Taking Off the Rose-Tinted Glasseshttps://tgigreeny.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/retro-taking-off-the-rose-tinted-glasses/
https://tgigreeny.wordpress.com/2011/08/02/retro-taking-off-the-rose-tinted-glasses/#respondTue, 02 Aug 2011 10:36:24 +0000http://tgigreeny.com/?p=1436]]>Retro gaming is a funny thing. Quite a lot of the joy of going back in time and playing old console and computer games is the sheer nostalgia value, and part is the joy of discovering games and systems that might have passed you by first time around. Odd thing is though, that unless you also invest in some period kit – a nice big nineties CRT TV for instance, you won’t be getting the same experience.

Take my recent purchase of a PlayStation 2, for instance. Ok so it’s not the most retro of retro consoles but coming, as it did, in the last generation before HD became de rigeur, Sony’s big black (or in my case silver) monolith was capable of outputting rock steady, pin sharp images to LCD and plamsa TVs via a component cable.

Back when I originally had a PS2 in the early 2000s, the best I could manage was an RGB SCART connection into a 28 inch widescreen CRT. That seemed fine at the time, and it wasn’t until my Xbox 360 arrived, along with a 40 inch HD LCD telly, that I realised just how good games could look. So going back now to the PS2 on my big, shiny Samsung panel, I was keen to sample to very best picture quality I could muster, and duly forked out for a component cable from eBay.

A PS2 component cable. Oddly, you'll be surprised how bad this came make some games look.

Don’t get me wrong the picture now looks great, technically speaking. Text is pin sharp, there’s no moire pattern and everything is crisp and well defined. The problem is the resolution, which on many PS2 games (stand up GTA III) is so low it rivals teletext for blockiness. Playing through early PS2 titles such as Gran Turismo 3 or Pro Evo 4 really showed just how blocky and pixelated those titles really were (later releases such as GT4 made better use of the PS2’s display capabilities, either outputting in higher resolution or using better texturing and antialiasing tricks to mask the issue).

While the games themselves were just as much fun (in the main – though the years haven’t been kind to earlier PES games) in themselves, the experience of staring at a massive screen full of jagged pixels rather took the shine off. Certainly screen size plays a part in this. Forty inches is great for playing 720p 360 games just a few feet from the screen, but anything older needs to be seen much further away. In fact, I’d argue that with a decent PS2 AV connection, up-close anything above 22 inches actually distracts from the playing experience. So, notwithstanding the money I’d just spent on a shiny new cable, I decided to whip out an old composite RGB PS2 lead I had lying around and see how that looked. It certainly masked some of the resolution issues, but in losing that much definition from the picture it made the experience just as distracting because of the blurriness. In fact it would have been just as easy to play via a component cable while wearing a pair of glasses smeared in vaseline.

GTA 3 - like an old girfriend, probably looks worse than you remember

So what’s going on? SCART was fine before, and now component only shows up the inadequacies of the system’s AV output on modern hardware. The simple truth is context and expectation. When we fire up a NES and play Super Mario Brothers 3 we’re not expecting a technical or visual tour de force. Sure, back in the day the NES’ graphics and sound capabilities were its big selling point, but most of us now think of 8 and even 16 bit titles in pure gameplay terms, so far removed are they aesthically from their younger siblings. More recent retro-fare though doesn’t have that luxury. Many of the PS2 (and Xbox) games we raved about ten years ago were exciting largely because of their visual appeal, sadly in the cold late of day, on modern hardware, even relatively recent, last gen titles just don’t look that good. GT4 is perhaps the exception, outputting in 1080i for single player races in NTSC mode. Almost everything else looks, well, a bit ropey.

GT4 - one of few last-gen titles that still looks good today

That’s fine though, just remember that when you delve into the black art of retro gaming, graphics are worth very little. You won’t be wowed by Black like you were on launch, and I promise games like Metal Gear Solid 2 will surprise you with just how primitive they look. In some cases it will wipe out a lot of that warm nostalgia glow that you feel from revisiting an old favourite, and you might be surprised that you end up spending more of your PS2 retro gaming time on titles like We Love Katamari and Marvel vs Capcom 2 that might not cut it in the great polygon pissing contests that seem to have dominated recent gaming, but have what it takes where it really takes. in the gameplay stakes.

It’s been enjoyable, my first few hours in the shoes of newly minted detective Cole Phelps, but not quite in the way I was expecting. It seems that Rockstar, having practically invented the 3D sandbox genre, are now defying the expectations heaped upon that market niche by the countless Grand Theft Auto clones that fill it. Sure, LA Noire uses the same basic technology as GTA but like Red Dead Redemption before it, it’s far from being the same game with a new setting.

Sure as Cole you can drive, walk and run around a massive, lifelike city full of pedestrians, motorists and shopkeepers that appear to be minding their own businesses. On the surface, it’s the just the same immersive world as Liberty City, but the game’s structure discourages exploration. You play through cases in a fixed order (save for side missions that are radioed in to you in your car as you travel from destination to destination), and while playing through them your emphasis will always be on solving the current crime, rather then heading off to explore. That instict would seem to be correct as there are far fewer opportunities for off-piste amusement than either GTA IV or Red Dead.

The cinematic style is very 40s film noir.

That said where Team Bondi have seemingly trimmed the fat in terms of extraneous detail, they’ve really put the hours in on the meat of the game. Each case is presented like a mini film-noir thriller from the forties. There are even flashbacks, a moody voiceover and the ability to play through the entire game in black and white should you wish (if you do you’ll miss the beautiful use of saturated forties colour throughout.

It’s all very immersive, and the dialogue and voice acting are both TV-show quality. In fact, it is to TV that my thoughts turn while playing LA Noire’s first few missions. The episodic nature of the game’s linear plot, and the pacing of each episode (largely dialogue-based, but interspersed with one or two set piece car chases or gunfights) is more like a high quality detective show than a traditional game. Rest assured, like Mass Effect, if you don’t want to sit through long in-game sections of dialogue, LA Noire is not the game for you. You’ll spend more time watching that playing, but fortunately the production values are so high that seldom feels like a chore.

Missions are handed out in order, rather than discovered a la GTA.

What does feel slightly odd are two of the game’s central mechanics. As a detective its your job to scour crime scenes for clues and to interrogate suspects. The first is a task that often descends into tedium, with you walking Cole repeatedly around a location waiting for the pad’s vibration to reveal another possible clue to be examined. You’re guided in this by music that only stops when all the clues have been uncovered (this can be turned off for the more hardcore investigator). In truth, impatient players will quickly start using their stock of “intuition points” to reveal the location of every clue on a HUD in the screen’s corner.

Forties LA looks great, as do the game's avatars.

Interrogations are also a little odd. The game’s most original mechanic, you’re required to question suspects and witnesses alike and after each answer can select whether you think they are lying, telling the truth or somewhere in between. Get it wrong and the interviewee will clam up. To judge whether they’re pants are indeed on fire or not you’ll need to use the evidence you gathered from the crime scene, and you’ll have to read their facial expressions, body language and listen carefully to what they say. That task is made all the more entertaining by the simply stunning facial animation engine at work. It really does represent a staggering leap in game avatar technology, and one that I hope Rockstar use in whatever next-gen Grand Theft Auto title they’re currently brewing up in their development labs. Sadly some of the magic of that new tech is wasted on a the system’s simple nature. I managed to severely upset a fifteen year old rape victim by accusing her of lying. I had evidence to prove that she’d been sexually assaulted, yet she told me she hadn’t been. Surely that was a lie I though as I stabbed the button, I even had her torn panties to back me up, but no – the game insisted I had got that one wrong. Interestingly, you have the option of spending those intuition points to see what everyone else who plays the game has selected, a kind of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire style Ask the Audience feature. When I played just 10% of gamers asked the right question after using that feature. A sure sign that the majority of other LA Noire players found the exchange counterintuitive – and it’s sadly not an isolated example.

So the game has some issues to overcome, but it’s also engrossing. In fact, I’d venture that it will appeal far more to players who enjoyed classic point and click adventure games like Money Island or Beneath a Steel Sky, that fans of GTA’s action packed sandbox mayhem. The game gently prods you in the right direction and encourage thorough, sometimes laborious examination of every item and dialogue option available. Played in the right mood (LA Noire is not a game for quick blasts, each case can take an hour or more to solve) it’s just like settling in for the latest episode of a lushly produced, interactive film noir cop show, and if that sounds like your cup tea, this is the game for you.

A few months back I wrote about the modding options available for perhaps the most playable game in the whole Pro Evolution Soccer series, PES 6. For all the countless shirts, stadia and options that modding PES 6 provides, and as much as it still plays a cracking game of football, there may be those who crave customised PC football with the most up to date PES engine possible. Well rest assured, all is not lost. While the most recent iteration of Konami’s football series may not be quite as endlessly tweakable as its older brother, there are plenty of options for the tinkerer to experiment with.

Perhaps the best option of all is to use one of the excellent superpatches that exist for the game. I’ve tried a few, and to my eyes the best by far is the Fire Patch, which is now up and beyond version 1.5. This works by installing all the necessary back end gubbins, then presenting you with a pre-game menu system that allows you to configure your PES experience (by swapping over the relevant files) before you fire up the game. The options are extensive and include the ability to overhaul the score and time graphics (I went for an ESPN HD look to match the ESPN commentary). You can replace the in-game stadia, though unlike PES 6 you won’t be able to add new stadia to existing ones, meaning you can’t match the older games ability to have hundreds of stadia, all associated with different club and national sides.

Yup, your merseyside derbies now feature real teams, and stadia

The new HD kits and faces look great, and there are the usual tweaks to menu screen and background music. Of course, for many fans the biggest joy of adding a superpatch like this is the total, FIFA-like accuracy it brings to leagues, competitions and club line ups. No more English league, now there are Premier League logos and accurate team badges, kits and rosters everywhere. In fact the game ends up looking like it would if Konami could afford to compete with EA and stump up for a full set of licenses.

For others though, superpatches like this are all about tweaking the gameplay experience. Here too, Fire Patch allows you to tinker, you can keep the default AI settings, or opt for a newer, more realistic and challenging configuration. The tweaked AI certainly plays a different game of football, with matches often breaking down into battles of midfield attrition. It’s very realistic, but long-standing fans of the PES series may want to do without as it does dampen some of the tradional fun, attacking options that are the Konami trademark.

Proper kits, logos, leagues - everything really.

In all, and given the layers upon layers of options that allow gamers to tweak PES 2011 to the max, the Fire Patch is an essential download. It’s also regularly updated, so you can keep up with all the latest kit designs and new transfers in time for the new series.

Having taken quite a few snow-filled landscape shots while on snowboarding trips over the past few years, I’ve always struggled to make them seem in anyway interesting. In real life, the majestic vistas of snow capped alpine peaks are breathtaking, but as images, they seem flat and lifeless. However, recently I’ve hit upon a technique centring on black and white, with a post-processed red filter and some contrast-enhancing curves tweaks that really make those snow shots come to life. I’ve uploaded several experimental attempts to perfect the technique with various images to my Flickr account, so feel to take a look and let me know what you think in the comments.

Dirt 3 may be the first title in Codemasters’ offroad racing franchise to have dropped the name of the late, great Colin McRae, but oddly it feels more like a celebration of the discipline he helped make famous than any other title in the series. Dirt 2’s teeth-grating slide into easy Americanisation is well-documented and oft-lamented, but for all its overuse of “extreme” this and “radical” that and an overbearing preponderance of brightly coloured shoe manufacturers, it was a fundamentally excellent game. The same remains true of this title, but the balance between “yoof” friendly commercialisation and rally-anorak enjoyment has been tweaked to near perfection. Yes, there are still buggy and truck based events featuring relatively large packs racing on mud and snow-strewn circuits, but they feel like an enhancement to the rally sections, rather than a replacement for them.

Rallying, for all its historical import and fervent fanboyism, is an unusual motorsport. It’s not particularly televisual because it happens mainly in crappy weather along remote routes dozens of miles long that it would cost a TV company millions to line with cameras. The competitors race the clock, rather than each other, so there’s no overtaking to speak of. In fact, it’s a wonder anyone enjoys the damn sport at all. But they do, and the sadly deceased Mr McRae is as responsible for publicising it on these shores as almost anyone else. Sadly his departure from the sport, and its move to the ignaminy of obscure satelite TV coverage means that most people’s only experience of modern rallying will be in simulated form via their PCs or consoles, and probably via a Codemasters game. Barring the stillborn challenge of rivals like V-Rally and WRC, the Codies have long held a near-monopoly on videogame rallying success, first with the long-running Colin McRae rally series and latterly with the reinvented Dirt franchise.

Who knew a Ford Fiesta could be so much fun?

Trouble is, with no one watching the sport in real life, and with no new British heroes to replace the like of McRae and Richard Burns, interest in the sport is waning. I’ve not followed the WRC for many years, but I understand that much like Formula One every race is one by some guy called Sebastien. That’s not great for ratings in the UK and is even worse for Codemasters, who can n0 longer cover the increased development cost of next-gen titles with a few niche European sales. It’s easy to see then why they jumped on the bandwagon of the American skateboarding generation and pitched Colin McRae Dirt 2 at a transatlantic audience. Problem is, it backfired and too much of the game was spent being lectured by voiceover artists doing their best impressions of Brad Pitt’s character from True Romance or engaged in lifeless, artificial-feeling landrush and truck races.

As much as the popularity of rallying might have waned, its still the purest and most exhilarating form of offroad motorsport. It may not be the easiest to follow on TV, but it’s a whole lot more fun when you’re actually doing it yourself. Fortunately Codemasters have realised this and brought rallying, and it’s steroidal, hillclimb-cased cousin trailblazing back to the fore. Indeed the UK release of Dirt 3 proudly boasts on the box that it contains “the most rally content in the series ever”. And it’s certainly a welcome return. While it’s nice occasionally to ram a few opponents off the track and to lap a back marker or two, the tension of going up against the clock, at night, in the icy rain with only your co-driver’s pace notes and your reflexes to keep you from smashing into the nearest tree is still the definitive off-road experience.

External view - for wimps

Codemasters have always succeeded where others have failed in getting the balance right between rally realism and arcade enjoyment. While you can tinker with tyre setups and gear ratios, very few people will actually bother or need to. The handling is on the twitchy side of realistic, but gets away with it, just like every Codemasters racing games since TOCA. There are six difficulty options, driving aids like braking lines and that now ubiquitous Codies invention, the flashback. As has bee noted elswhere, the flashback is brilliant because it allows the game itself to be reasonably brutal, with solid race ending crashes and the ever-present danger of a big accident, without leading to frustration. You can drive on the ragged edge because there’s the chance to reset things if you balls it up. Equally, the limited availability of the rewinds mean that there’s no absence of challenge, keep the risk-reward balance right where it should be. It’s an approach Codemasters have consistently got right through their recent racing series, from this to Grid to F1 2010.

So the racing is good, the Ego-graphics engine ticks along smoothly and with admirable visual polish and the rallying is plentiful. Does that mean Dirt 3 is entirely shorn of its teen-friendly Americanism and has returned to a niche racer for fans of muddy Welsh forrests. Not so, and for once, that’s a good thing. See, the thing Codemasters did brilliantly at the outset of their love affair with rallying was to marry a promising game to the star quality of the only megastar British offroad racing has ever produced, and with Dirt 3, they’ve done the same internationally. For while there’s no licenced name above the title of this release, it should really be called Ken Block’s Dirt 3. While you’re still forced to suffer the endless yammering of annoying “mentors” over every loading and menu screen, the real star of the show is the DC shoes founder and US rally star, who is best known for his YouTube sensation Gymkhana videos.

Abu Dhabi racing and snow don't seem like they would mix well

These feature Block and a batshit-crazy Ford Fiesta donuting, powersliding and jumping his way around an area laid out with cones, ramps and obstacles. It’s far better than it sounds, and is a mecahnic Codemasters have cleverly brought into Dirt 3 in a big way. Progression through the game can be achieved without ever having to enter Gymkhana mode’s Tony Hawk style trick contests, but the experience is far richer for those who compete. The precision driving skills and car control needed for Block’s events are not far removed from those required in the hardest rally races and the player is given just enough freedom to make chaining tricks together fun, and tricky, but never frustrating. Block also lends the game’s cheerily transatlantic branding an air of veracity. The man may not be in anything like the same off-road league as McRae, Loeb or the like, but anyone who’s seen his appearance on Top Gear knows the man is a genuine sensation.

The other key innovation with this year’s Dirt is the realisation that rallying’s best days may well lie behind it. It’s telling that access to modern WRC cars is left until pretty late in the game’s single player progression, by which time they feel pretty superfluous. Truth is Sebastian Loeb’s Citroen may well be an engineering marvel, but modern class rules and general apathy towards the sport among even motorsport fans mean that most will turn to the startlingly complete array of historial motors instead. Almost every race can be tackled with modern cars, or a selection of greats from yesterday. That means hillclimb legends like the Pikes Peak Audi Quattro or Ari Vatenan’s Peugeot 405 are available in hillclimb mode. Rally fans can compete in anything from a 1960s Mini Cooper to a Group B Lancia. Rather than being tied to a restrictive WRC licence, it means Codemasters can draw on the rich pallete of rallying history to paint their masterpiece. And it works. No one can tell me there’s any better motoring experience on Xbox 360 than yumping a Group B Quattro over the crest of a Kenyan dirt track at 120 miles an hour while spectators run for cover. That’s exactly what rallying is about, and Codemasters genius is to ensure the game can be tackled almost entirely with historic or brand new cars, please players of all ages and perspectives. You can even upload minute long replays of your greatest moments straight to YouTube if you like, to show your mates the moment you had a Stratos sideways in a Finnish forest.

Group B is where the fun's really at

Sadly though the pace of progress has left is mark on the game in a couple of truly irritating ways. Firstly Codemasters have now jumped on the same bandwagon as EA and are including “online pass” codes with each game. That means anyone picking Dirt 3 up second hand will have to fork out again if they want to compete online. I know it’s standard form, but it still feels like gamers are being robbed just because publishers can get away with it. On the same note there’s an intrusive amount of game content that’s locked off, waiting for DLC purchases. After shelling out £40 on a game, its pretty unfair to hide eight or so cars and an entire racing environment behind £16 worth of extras. It’s made especially galling because the extra cars and races are included in the vehicle and track selections for each section of the Dirt Tour, meaning the experience is part rally career, part advertising showcase for the Xbox Live Marketplace. DLC should feel like its adding value. Witness the fine add-ons for titles like Mass Effect 3 and Red Dead Redemption that are welcome and compelling once purchased, but not glaring omissions should the user decide to leave them on the shelf. The online money-spinning doesn’t quite have what it takes to ruin a fine game, but it does take the shine off the whole package somewhat, especially if you’re the kind of completist who feels compelled to unlock everything game like this has to offer.